


i want to (be someone else or i'll explode)

by notcaycepollard



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fooling Around, Lipstick & Lip Gloss, Multi, teenage experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 05:30:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15284712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: “This is kind of weird,” Peter says, letting Shuri tuck his hair under the wig. “Isn’t this kind of weird?”“What’s weird?” Michelle asks, and Peter’s not really sure how to articulate any of this—the makeup, the hair, where all of it is going or not going—so he just shrugs, lets it happen. MJ and Shuri confer over arranging the wig, whether he’s got enough makeup on, and then MJ’s picking up a glossy red lipstick, raising her eyebrows at Shuri like she’s asking her opinion.“Yes,” Shuri says. “Absolutely.”This is the point at which Peter should say something, if he was gonna say something, but he just opens his mouth, lets MJ grab him by the jaw and angle his chin up so she can brush the sticky gloss over his mouth. Peter licks his lips, presses them together. Looks up at the both of them.





	i want to (be someone else or i'll explode)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pearwaldorf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearwaldorf/gifts).



It’s easier to get chill with MJ and Shuri than Peter first thought it might be.

That is—Shuri is an honest-to-god princess genius, and MJ is _MJ_ , and Peter knows he winds up a stuttering mess around them half the time, but now that he and MJ are in Shuri’s outreach intern program while school’s out it’s like Shuri was just waiting to make friends with a couple of bisexual disaster American teens with impulse control issues and parental permission to live across country for the summer.

They wind up hanging out in Shuri’s room basically 24/7, drinking too much coffee and making dumb videos on the totally-not-Vine app Shuri’s put together to run on her kimoyo beads. MJ tries to make them watch anime. Peter tries to make them watch Star Wars. After a week, Peter’s not sure what he’s gonna do come fall, senior year and the pressure of college applications, how he’ll survive in a world that doesn’t smell of cocoa shea butter and where he doesn’t fall asleep half the time with MJ’s hair in his mouth.

“I went to CVS,” Shuri announces one afternoon, clearly tiring of the latest American teen movie experience they’re trying to provide, and Peter would complain about her lack of attention except he has to admit, they’ve all been hardly watching _The Breakfast Club_ for the last forty minutes, throwing popcorn at each other and mugging for not-Vine and comparing snack food. Shuri’s got them all hooked on puff puff, to the point where they’ve snuck into the outreach science center more than once to mess around with deep-frying over the burners, and now Peter’s full of fried dough and powdered sugar, kind of sleepy and less interested than he usually is in the eighties cinematic experience.

“Why?” MJ says. “I can’t imagine you needing anything from CVS.”

“I wanted to look at makeup,” Shuri shrugs, sitting up and reaching for her bag. “American cosmetics are _terrible_. Where is the range? Did I miss something?”

“Nah,” MJ says. “You didn't miss anything. Cosmetics companies are just racist as shit.”

“I am going to call Rihanna,” Shuri says. “To make better formulations. Maybe something with tone-mirroring nanites.”

“You— _Rihanna,_ ” MJ repeats, and Shuri nods. “Do you, um. You know who that is, right.”

“She runs this makeup company,” Shuri says, “they sent me samples,” and waits a beat, cackles with laughter. “Of course I know who Rihanna is. You think we don't have the internet in Wakanda? But Fenty did send me samples, look, this highlighter isn't bad.”

“Yeah, it's pretty nice,” MJ agrees, and from there the conversation gets incomprehensible super quickly, the both of them testing sparkly shit on each other until they're basically clouds of loose glitter every time they move. Peter flops back against the foot of the bed. Closes his eyes. It's not like he minds; it's nice being here, anyway, all crowded together so that Shuri's knee is pressed into the side of his ribs from how she's sitting cross-legged, MJ sometimes poking his shoulder for no other reason than to gently bother him.

 

A few minutes go by, or maybe half an hour, and MJ’s prodding gets more targeted, her fingertips gentle on his eyelids even though they’re still kind of sticky and gritty with sugar.

“What are you doing,” Peter says drowsily. Doesn't open his eyes. He was up late last night, and the intern program is super intense, and he's pretty comfortable here at the foot of Shuri’s bed, listening to the soft hum of their conversation, MJ's husky deadpan drawl and the bright laughter that always follows from Shuri. At some point one of them, probably MJ, has turned off his movie to put on Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet instead, and Peter sort of figures he should wake up enough to pay attention, because, like, it's _Shakespeare,_ and also because it turns out Leo DiCaprio was really pretty way back in the nineties, but he's so comfortable he can hardly move. MJ brushes something else over his eyelids, his brows, and Peter wrinkles his nose.

“Just making you pretty,” MJ says. “You should fill in your brows more often, dude.”

“Thanks for the advice,” Peter murmurs. Doesn't twitch even when she swipes the mascara wand over his eyelashes.

“No foundation,” Shuri says, “we've got nothing that'll match this piece of paper,” and MJ snickers, brushes something onto his cheekbones.

“Hey asshole, open your eyes,” MJ tells him, “I wanna put some eyeliner on you,” and it's usually easier to go along with MJ than to try and argue. Plus, Peter thinks, if he's really honest with himself: it's nice, the way she's touching him. It makes him feel—it's nice.

“You look pretty,” he tells her sleepily, because she does; she’s got some kind of gold stuff along her cheekbones that makes her look all glowing and radiant and stuff.

“Shut up,” MJ says, and smacks his shoulder.

“No, you do!” he protests. “I’m serious, come on.”

“You do,” Shuri agrees, “you’re beautiful,” and MJ ducks her head, clears her throat like she doesn’t know how to handle the compliment.

 

“Hey,” Shuri says after a minute or two. “I’ve got a great idea, hold on.” She jumps up, digs in a suitcase for a minute, pulls out a bunch of shit. “Take off your shirt and put this on,” she says. Throws a t-shirt at him.

“ _What_ ,” Peter says, and it comes out in a squeak, his voice going high and weird.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Shuri says, rolls her eyes. “We can look away, if that would help your American sensibilities.”

“It's not—that's—fine, whatever,” Peter stutters. Unbuttons his shirt, pulls it off and tugs on the t-shirt; it’s oversized, wide in the neck, and it slips off one shoulder, leaves Peter feeling kind of underdressed.

“Yes,” Shuri says, assessing him, “I’ll be right back,” and disappears off into the next room like she’s on a very specific mission.

_Dude_ , Peter texts Ned, because Ned grew up with a big sister, and maybe that's what's going on here. _Did your sister and her friends ever, like, dress you up?_

_Yeah, man_ , Ned texts back. _Back when Chloe was, like, fourteen, whenever she had a sleepover it was always like, Ned, come on, let us do your hair. Like I was some kind of little doll they could play dress-up with, god, it was the worst. I'm just lucky it was before any of them had phones with cameras._

That should feel reassuring, Peter thinks. It should be reassuring, except—when Chloe was fourteen, Ned was, like, eight. There’s a difference, he thinks, between being your teenage sister’s baby brother and whatever this is, whatever it might be.

 

When Shuri comes back, she’s holding—

“Is that a wig?” MJ asks, squinting at it, and Shuri nods.

“It’s Okoye’s, technically. She won’t care, though, she hates it. Peter, sit still so I can get this on you.”

“This is kind of weird,” Peter says, letting her tuck his hair under the wig. “Isn’t this kind of weird?”

“What’s weird?” Michelle asks, and Peter’s not really sure how to articulate any of this—the makeup, the hair, where all of it is going or not going—so he just shrugs, lets it happen. MJ and Shuri confer over arranging the wig, whether he’s got enough makeup on, and then MJ’s picking up a glossy red lipstick, raising her eyebrows at Shuri like she’s asking her opinion.

“Yes,” Shuri says. “Absolutely.”

This is the point at which Peter should say something, if he was gonna say something, but he just opens his mouth, lets MJ grab him by the jaw and angle his chin up so she can brush the sticky gloss over his mouth. Peter licks his lips, presses them together. Looks up at the both of them.

“That,” Michelle says. Blinks a couple of times. “Huh, that—I, uh.”

“What?” Shuri asks, like she’s curious, and MJ actually blushes, barely visible against her warm brown skin.

“I’m usually, uh, I’m usually mostly into girls,” she admits. “But that’s. Not bad.”

“He’s very pretty,” Shuri agrees, and Peter all of a sudden feels exposed, weirdly vulnerable under the weight of their combined gaze. Is this what girls feel like, he wonders, is this what MJ keeps talking about, the female gaze, that one quote from Margaret Atwood he doesn’t think he really understands about being an observer inside your own body, and wants to tug at the low neckline of the t-shirt. Wants them to keep looking at him like that. Wants MJ to touch his mouth again, or to boss him around a little, or—

“Hey,” MJ murmurs, “Peter,” and then she’s touching her fingertips to his chin, tilting his face up and very deliberately leaning closer, and Shuri’s hands are still on MJ’s waist, bracketing her in. Peter hears his breath hitch.

“Yeah,” he says, voice squeaking again, _fuck_ , and feels himself flush hot with embarrassment. They laugh at that, soft and not quite mocking, and Peter feels his blush spread down his throat, over his collarbones and down his chest. He’s—he’s less dressed than they are, for shit’s sake, MJ’s in her flannel shirt like always and Shuri in some futuristic high-collared thing Peter doesn’t even know how to describe, and noticing that makes Peter’s skin prickle, makes him feel even more exposed. He’s kind of hard about it, he realizes; this is—it’s doing something for him, whatever this is, and he sorta doesn’t know whether to be embarrassed about that too or for it to be a normal response to the situation, what the fuck this situation might even be. He feels, suddenly, so far out of his depth that it makes him want to gasp for air, breathless and alert and all of a sudden wanting. Not sure, entirely, what it is he wants, but every cell in his body alert for it like his spider-sense knows something he doesn’t.

“What,” he says, “what, um, do you—” and Michelle rolls her eyes, drags her fingers along his jaw, down his throat.

“At first we were doing this for fun,” she tells him. “But now you’re super pretty so we’re objectifying you.”

“Oh,” Peter manages. “That’s—okay, that’s. Cool. Yeah.”

“If you don’t kiss him,” Shuri says, impatient and imperious and a little teasing, “I will.”

“I’m getting to it,” MJ says, “god, you wanna kiss someone so bad, you could try it with me.”

“Smooth,” Peter says, can’t help it, it _is_ smooth even taking into account how MJ’s generally less of a stuttering hot mess than Peter. MJ smacks him in the shoulder, hard enough to hurt if it weren’t for the fact that he’s, like, Spider-Man and stuff, and as it is it still sort of stings. Shuri snickers.

“Kiss your boy and then come here, then,” she tells MJ, and that’s apparently what does it; MJ leans back in, slants her mouth over his with no hesitation at all, and shit, it’s not like Peter hasn’t idly thought about kissing her, day-dreamed about it during boring math classes and slow afternoons on neighborhood patrol, but the reality of it, MJ kissing him with intent and intensity, dragging her teeth against his lower lip, it’s so far from what he’s imagined, so much more thorough and deliberate and sparkingly hot that it’s kind of incredible he doesn’t just black out on the spot.

“Is that how you kiss your girl, too?” Shuri asks, murmuring low enough that Peter only just catches it, and MJ smirks against Peter’s mouth, pulls away.

“Why don’t you c’mere and let me show you, huh.”

Fuck, if kissing MJ was hot then being the audience for MJ and Shuri kissing is goddamn _incandescent_ , Peter thinks, and then gets guilty again because he’s pretty sure that’s exactly the patriarchal male gaze that MJ talks about, objectifying women like they’re putting on a show for him or something, and it’s honestly not like he even means it that way, it’s just—it’s too much, it’s too good, and Peter bites the inside of his cheek to ground himself, gets daring about it and reaches out to touch Shuri’s wrist where there are still smudges of color swatched against her skin.

 

That has Shuri leaning over to kiss him, light and sweet, and then MJ is mouthing down Shuri’s neck, her shoulder, getting back in between Peter and Shuri so she can kiss the both of them in turn. It gets sticky, heated, messy and gasping. It's—fuck, it’s overwhelming. _Heady with lust_ , Peter thinks, and then immediately feels like a total tool for even thinking it in his own head, but. Shuri tugs MJ out of her flannel and shucks off her future-science-dress thing and then they all lose their pants, clumsy and tripping over themselves as they wriggle out of leggings and skinny jeans, and it’s not like they haven’t been in bed together before, all piled into a bed slightly too narrow for the three of them and too lazy to go back to their own rooms after a movie marathon or late night coding or whatever else, shit, it’s not even like they haven’t already been around each other in nothing but their underwear, messing around up on the pool on the roof after hours, but there’s something about the breathlessness and sticky lipgloss and the heat of skin on skin that feels utterly new, a world they’re only just discovering and figuring out how far they can go, and there’s something too about it being all three of them that has Peter’s brain absolutely goddamn short-circuiting, like, how the fuck did he get to this point in time.

Peter loses the wig, MJ immediately getting her fingers in his hair and tugging hard enough to make him groan, and then she’s in his lap, grinding on him and biting down on the muscle of his shoulder where the loose neck of Shuri’s t-shirt has slipped down on him again. Peter groans again, louder, hears his voice crack on it when he gasps. He doesn’t know where to put his hands, where’s okay to touch, and it’s like they can tell because MJ grabs one wrist, Shuri the other, and then they’re both, _fuck_ , holding him down. It’s not like he wouldn’t be able to throw off the grip, but just the implication of it is enough to make him pant, to make him whimper a little bit like they’re taking him apart, and Shuri snickers again like she knows exactly what’s going on in his head. She probably does; she’s a princess genius, after all, and all his thoughts are probably written right across his face along with messy lipstick and smudged eyeliner.

 

The movie's finished, has clicked back to the DVD player options menu, and that one Radiohead guitar riff has been on repeat for what might be hours, Peter's never gonna be able to hear it again without getting flashbacks to the way Michelle exhales this breathy little moan into his mouth when Shuri slips her hand up inside MJ’s t-shirt and palms over her breast. MJ’s riding him, her hips stutter-smooth in rolling figure eights, and Shuri’s pressed up behind her, kissing down the side of her throat, one hand on MJ’s waist and the other stroking up her bare thigh. Peter feels his dick twitch; he’s so hard it actually hurts, so hard he can practically feel it in the back of his throat. MJ grabs his hair again, pulls him up to sitting and kisses him hard, and then Shuri leans in over MJ’s shoulder so she can kiss Peter too. His lipstick is messy, he can feel it, can see the glossy red smears on both their mouths, MJ’s throat and collarbone, the curve of Shuri’s shoulder where he must have pressed his mouth without thinking, and it’s just, seeing all the places his mouth has been, all the spots they’ve let him kiss them, it’s brain-meltingly hot.

 

They’re still looking at him kind of assessing, kind of like they might eat him whole, and Peter swallows hard, wonders if it’s possible to come just from having two women look at him like that, because: Jesus _Christ_ , it feels like it might be. And then MJ tilts her hips at a sharper angle, grabs Peter’s hand and shoves it in between them, and he can feel that she’s wet through the damp cotton of her underwear where she’s pressed down against him, her plain black hipster shorts fraying a little at the hems.

“Are you—”

“ _Touch me_ ,” MJ snaps, brittle and breathless, and when Peter blinks and focuses he can see the sweat at her temples, the flush in her cheeks. He slides his thumb under the fabric and rubs the pad of it against her clit, cautious at first and then more confident, and his whole body feels like a heartbeat, like he might shudder right out of his skin between one breath and the next. MJ’s kissing Shuri again, gasping into it, losing her composure for the first time Peter’s ever seen, and just as Peter’s thinking _holy shit holy shit_ _I might have successfully gotten a girl to come_ , that’s it, he’s over the edge before he can do a damn thing.

“Don’t stop,” MJ says, urgent, and fuck, their health teachers spent a lot of time telling them to wear a condom and don’t have sex but they did not spend a single second explaining how to focus, immediately post-orgasm, sufficiently to give someone else what they’re looking for.

“Guh,” Peter says, trying desperately to get his brain back online, and Shuri helps, thank fuck, gets both hands under MJ’s shirt and does something that has MJ moaning and fucking down harder against Peter’s thumb, his knuckles; when she comes Peter thinks he might almost come again just from the sheer incandescent fire of it, the way her mouth falls open and her eyes close and she tightens all over like a bow about to release.

“Shit,” she says, barely a few seconds later. Rolls sideways off Peter and collapses next to him. “Yeah, that. Wasn’t terrible. Good job.”

“I—okay. Good. Yeah. Great.”

“Do you want to learn how to go down on me?” Shuri asks him, casual and wicked all at once, and Peter chokes on his own breath.

“Uh, _yes_ ,” he says, barely getting it out, and Shuri grins at him, stretches out on the other side of him and nudges him until he moves to kneel between her thighs.

 

Shuri’s exactly as precise and scientific and perfectly bossy as Peter would have expected, if he’d ever wondered what she’d be like teaching someone to eat her out, and once MJ recovers she gets in on the action, sliding her fingers back into Peter’s hair like she just likes to pull it and hasn’t had enough of a chance until now.

“More,” Shuri gasps, “Peter, more,” and MJ is such a goddamn jerk that she yanks Peter’s head back so he can’t give Shuri what she wants, has to struggle to get his mouth back on her clit. It makes Shuri swear, smack MJ on the thigh, and then she’s arching up into it instead, strong thighs clenching against his head and shoulders until she's all he can feel, just heat and skin and salt-sour wetness on his mouth. When she comes he's pretty sure it's not so much any skill on his part as much as knowing exactly what she wants and telling him how to get her there, but that is absolutely fine by him because he's _got his mouth on Shuri's clit_ , holy _fuck,_ it's too much, he’s half-hard again and all his thought processes have dissolved into a high-pitched whine like a siren or a piece of electronics just before it shorts out.

 

“Acceptable?” MJ asks, like she’s curious, and Shuri shrugs and nods all at the same time, nudges Peter away with her knee.

“He’s a fast learner.” It’d sound composed if there wasn’t a hitch in her voice, her thighs still shaking a little. Peter grins. Pushes his hair out of his face, kisses the inside of her thigh just above her knee, sits back on his heels, and MJ pulls him back down, shoves him ungently until he’s lying next to her.

“My ass is cold,” she says, “you gotta spoon me and warm it up.” It’s not even the first time MJ’s told him to do this; apparently a great side-effect of a metabolism running as fast as his does now is that he’s always throwing off enough excess heat to function as a perambulating space heater for everyone around him. Peter slings his arm around her waist, presses his forehead between her shoulder blades and breathes in the smell of her skin; MJ and Shuri are kissing again, laughing a little, and Peter is sleepy and warm even with how his underwear is plastered to him and increasingly, uncomfortably sticky with drying come.

“Did that lipstick say it was smudge proof?” MJ asks eventually.

“It did not,” Shuri says. Pauses before adding, lazily, “I’ll work on one. A better formula.”

“Yeah, good. We’ll test it out on Peter again.”

“What good is there in being a scientist genius princess if you can’t invent a lipstick that holds out through going down on a woman,” Shuri agrees, and Peter’s been around her long enough now to hear the lilt in her voice that tells him she’s saying it just for his reaction, but he can’t help it; he snickers, flushes red, hides it behind MJ’s hair.

“We should go up to the roof and make out in the hot tub,” MJ suggests after another minute of silence, and it’s a good suggestion except with how they’re all too tired to move, apparently, sleepy enough that they all doze off in a pile with that Radiohead riff still playing in the background.

 

_SHURI, O MY PRINCESS,_ Okoye says via kimoyo the next day, loud enough that Peter and MJ hear it across the room, look up from their computers and glance curiously at Shuri.

“Yes?” Shuri asks, smiling for the hologram, and Okoye’s sigh is even louder.

“This is my _undercover wig_. What in Bast’s name did you do to it, princess?”

“Oh,” Shuri says, mouth falling open for an instant before she recovers herself. “It was, uh. For an experiment.”

“Well, your _experiment_ ruined it,” Okoye tells her, and then switches to Xhosa to scold Shuri some more. Peter and MJ exchange looks, Peter knowing he’s turning red again; Shuri manages to placate Okoye, ends the kimoyo call, bites her lip.

“Next time,” she says. Looks up at the both of them. “We should probably do it without the wig.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> like everyone else in the known universe I have never been able to forget the tom holland rihanna lip sync situation
> 
> i'm on [tumblr!](http://notcaycepollard.tumblr.com/)


End file.
